


Bonnie and Clyde (ain’t got nothing on us)

by Burning_up_inside



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Banter, Consensual Underage Sex, Crimes & Criminals, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Smut, F/M, Falling In Love, Mutually Unrequited, Mystery, Partners in Crime, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:55:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28658316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burning_up_inside/pseuds/Burning_up_inside
Summary: The past, present and future of a crime unsolvedOr,Barry’s playing a character and Iris is playing to win.Or,Sometimes you fall in love and sometimes you die trying.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Iris West
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	Bonnie and Clyde (ain’t got nothing on us)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the long fic that I’ve been working on that been kicking my ass lol. I hope to post at least bimonthly updates until this is done but if I’m not which is likely please subscribe to my prof in order to get all my updates! I wrote another fic about this couple that u should check out that I’m really proud of!! Tags to be added!!

> “Why should you think that I should woo in scorn?
> 
> Scorn and derision never come in tears:
> 
> Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows so born,
> 
> In their nativity all truth.
> 
> How can these things in me seem scorn to you,
> 
> Bearing the badge of faith to prove them true?”
> 
> Act 3 Scene 2

* * *

December 10th 2006 | 11:12:46 | Barry

* * *

It was pulsing, the blood in his veins, his heart half out his chest, the very ground underneath him. It pulsed with music and the threat of upending his entire world. His stomach was roiling, it was like he housed a million cocoons, the fluttering barely locked away and quieted by alcohol, the muffled fear of exposing himself at the base of his throat. It bubbles up like tears, a hot suffering grip prying at his restraint, choking down desire in the shape of monarch butterflies. The lights are strobing around him and the darkened sway of melting bodies feel as if they are dripping through him, weakening paper thin defenses like gaps of grass in rain.

_Thump thump thump_ , 

Music louder than his brain, vibrating the same frequency as the thoughts he couldn’t shake, all of it is torture. The rising heat burning holes into his facade, the singed air clogging ash in his throat. He was the same as a newly ravaged tomb, ace bandages peeling off to showcase the misshapen mummy inside. His heart was not truly locked away, he was home to his own ramshackle safe. He could do no good wearing the combination between his lips, the truth is he had the code scored on the top layer of his heart.

The perspiration of his sweating glass cup keeps dripping down over his fingers, the ice not cold enough to cool him down, hot on the inside from all the poisoned juice and the increasing pooling want gathering at the base of his groin. Agreeing to this was like he had signed a waiver of his last will and testament, becoming a corpse eating away at every butterfly, at all desires, at all sins. This was not only an authentic admission to the depth of hell but it was admitting to every lie he’d ever told himself. He'd be signing with his lips like a damsel, a princess, he’d seal his fate. Not lost behind thickets of forest or decrepit castles shrouded in mystery or clouds. He’d drop dead in the middle of a club that had sticky floors and nauseating lighting, music he didn’t listen to and onlookers who want him to pay the price of covert desire with his body. He is going to die here looking into Iris’s eyes. 

Especially because she has this defiant look on her face, daring him. Begging in the form of a jest, and boy did she have him, she controls him in every conceivable way. She owns even the darkest parts of his all suffering brain, the parts that made him unworthy of even her quickest glance, of even her disgust. 

Her eyes are so soft, doe like around the edges, brown like molasses, gluing him to her, sinking into them without a chance for survival. All dressed up in dark blue, his favorite color he decided, just this second while he was leaning in. A framing tight shirt that he was sure she wore to drive him crazy and black jeans that were hugging her hips close and were making Barry want to do the same. So he does, moves his lonely hand to the warm skin exposed from her midriff.

The sound and the lights and the people were disappearing around him, one by one like his senses were dulling or brightening in a ring around her sun. It was the closest he had ever been to her on purpose and those damned butterflies must know how to swim the way they create this rushing current in his stomach. He tries to be more conscious of the _want_ that must waft off him.

He wonders if she can smell the alcohol on his breath, or the smell of Joe's cologne on his shoulders. Because he can only smell her perfume, a downright erotic scent, lavender and vanilla and cardamom, so soft and sweet with a punching hint of spice, of danger. If he can smell her danger, she must notice this overwhelming lust he can’t contain, a word he isn’t comfortable with, a word that couldn’t nearly describe the _needwantdesperation_ he felt for Iris, the burning desire that cripples him when she just says his name, the near anxious pain that accompanies her proximity, lust could not be a word that even nearly rivaled the dizzying intoxication of her touch, the euphoria of her attention, lust could not come close to the true undeniable desire he had for Iris.

Leaning in right now, decidedly melting into her he felt that lust, he felt it snake down into the pit of his stomach and grip tight around his groin. It almost toppled him over, like he was 14 and he just figured out touching yourself felt good. He was a centimeter from her lips, her face obscured, the warmth of her breath pebbling the back of his neck in goosebumps. All that blood in heart was rushing down too quickly to hold up his legs, it was like they were liquefying.

“ _Kiss me_ ” she whispers on his lips. The core of the earth explodes behind his eyes, his stomach drops, the ground all but opens up to catch him in its fiery abyss. ‘Kiss me’ she says but can’t know what that means, can’t know what she’s asking because if she did she would be mindful of the heart that’s going to burst out of his chest. They have been doing a silent shaky dance, and his breath catches right on her bottom lip and it’s glossed, it smells like mango and catches his lips in a sticky shine. He breathes shakily; his forehead leaning against hers and he can feel her promise, he can feel her want, if he doesn’t imagine it. Her breath is soft too, seemingly caught in her throat. Abstractly he worries about the butterflies and if when their lips touch, she’ll swallow one on accident.

He pushes in and there’s no way God created heaven when Iris wore it on her lips.

Soft and smooth and full, beautiful in all the ways that Iris was, beautiful because they were attached to Iris, Barry hasn’t ever _really_ kissed anyone, save the smack of the lips he has to do in his play rehearsals, he's definitely never been kissed like this. Iris threads her hands up from his shoulders through his hair, pulls him in closer and swallows his bottom lip with hers, he turns her head into the kiss, he can’t remember himself or his body or the world, so this kiss does not feel graceful, mired in hidden desires that he has not grown to understand or voice aloud. 

His kisses are greedy as if he had been starved, an outside look would suggest tenderness, rife languid movements of Iris’ hand in his hair and Barry’s grappling hands at her waist. But in the world he created, he is burrowing into her, she is carving out sallow holes and shaping divots into him only she can fill and Barry wishes he couldn’t notice that she is putting on show, checking to her side for her audience, the peanut gallery on full display while Barry’s whole world was dripping down his sleeve.

Barry searches with his tongue what he can’t reach with his words, he dives headfirst into the world this kiss was creating, where it was erasing the ties that Barry and Iris really have and double knotting them as people of grown up lust. Not just him, a pitiful skinny 17 year old science nerd, releasing years of pent up frustration on a club dance floor to prove that he was dating a girl who was completely out of his league. Realizing now, her slippery tongue dancing against his, the worst part is that he’s not _actually_ dating her and now a drug dealer who moonlighted as a bartender with a thing for Iris and a probably growing vendetta against Barry is judging their ruse.

* * *

December 4th 2006 | 08:24:13 | Barry

* * *

Barry isn’t disillusioned about his status as a spindly white guy in theater. Not under the guise that he offers an undue performance of epic proportions when he prances on the stage already sweating. He’d been guaranteed the lead before he had even auditioned; being the only other guy in drama class. Barry found it hard to feel important when you look out to a crowd who couldn’t care to know your name watching you. 

What Barry hadn’t realized was how much he depended on the show, the past couple months diving headlong into disappearing. Splintering into the static wood of cheap sets, melting into a ripe puddle from the burning lights. Decidedly burying himself 6 feet under mothballs in old theater clothes. It was the anticipation of opening night he thinks, that was having him begin feeling the melancholy of an expected end, it didn't even really hit him until he was backstage wiping sweat tacky makeup off his forehead from his first run to the audience of his exasperated play director. He was pushing it off with a wet paper towel in a pink vanity mirror surrounded by the moving rush of people filtering through changing rooms and he could not feel the glee. 

And don’t get him wrong, he isn’t searching for attention in the pockets of scattered applause and vacant eyes of stranded school officials and bored teenagers or the overactive mouthing and off kilter clapping from moms who never lived up to their potential. It’s just when he’s stripping from period piece pompous blouses and cropped leggings he can feel that hot flush of exhilaration drop deep out of his bones and the soft edges of exhaustion breathe under his skin. 

When’s he putting on a show he isn’t thinking about other people, 

but maybe he should be. 

Bask in the unilateralism of an audience who cheer or boo and feel emotion they are begged to, by scripts, by 11th grade vaguely homoerotic singing, but even he knows it’s when he’s pulling his old bobbled hoodie from his ninth grade trip to star labs on, he knows It’s the soft dread of just being himself that drives his performance. 

And sometimes he wishes to belong nowhere else, the three walls of the stage where everyone knows him by a different name, knows him as a victor, a hero. Lysander. Someone, somebody is rooting for. Wearing the stitched O on his lapel for orphan buries most contrite attempts of being normal.

He even knows partly it’s how he got the lead role, but there’s that thing about the horse. Beating it or something with a bow.

He hadn’t even been in theater for that long, his guidance counselor told him he had to diversify his interests outside of science for college. (Which sounded like bullshit) You live with Joe for long enough you learn not to question authority when the things they say are presented like facts. Iris was the one who told him to try it out, made poking remarks about the play they’d been in together back in 4th grade. He played a tree, she played a princess.

How fitting.

The kids in drama aren't particularly nice to newcomers, especially new kids who get lead roles with no prior practice but Barry isn’t new to bullying, isn’t unaware of the feeling of not belonging, quite used to feeling like an intrusion. 

There’s only a few ways to regard kids who don’t know you and don’t plan to get to know you. Indifference and maybe desperate grasping attempts for validation, friendship, camaraderie. It just didn’t strike Barry as a main priority to make happy with a bunch of kids who idolized Barbara Streisand.

A larger view of the world, would lead to a bit of soul searching on Barry’s part, where he could fully scope his main interests being Dragon Ball Z and a debilitating crush on the girl he lived with. But Barry wasn’t someone you’d ever call self aware. Clumsy was a good descriptor, awkward maybe, even obtuse sometimes. 

Which Barry was letting become more evident in the now completely oppressive sway Iris had over him. only mentioned because she had ruined him, he could barely talk to her anymore these days, it was somehow worse than middle school, when he first started popping boners that he had to hide with couch pillows, even worse than when Joe first started explicitly separating them, ground rules for what time they could be in eachothers bedrooms, that left Barry feeling sticky and obvious all over. He spent a frightful summer between 8th and 9th grade wondering if Joe knew, like he knew everything else.

It was almost the second semester of senior year and his whole life was being weighed in the balance, true existential fear of the unknown, it was being stranded in space, being lifted 70 feet of the ground with a timer to his side knowing he would hit the floor, it was a heartbreak away from the end of the world because, no matter what he did and no matter how much he didn’t want it. College, the future, meant that everything would change.

So Iris was a bright blip in his ever growing anxious perils, his northern star in the guide to the mess of life, his only other fixture to navigate through even the most perilous nights, ones where he woke up sweating and crying with the whispers of red lightning burning his eyes. She was like a limb on his body and he would walk away from her using _her_ as a crutch. They only applied to one college in common and the peril of it was chewing him up.

It was gut wrenching, not that he didn’t know, when she’d relayed her plan for the rest of her life ten times over. Not that he hadn’t listened, enraptured in her vivacity, in her gall , in her desire for life. It wasn’t that he didn’t know, but knowing wouldn’t ever compare to the pain of anticipation. Anticipation that was right around the corner, licking at his heels like a dog with a taste for blood.

He couldn’t even talk to her, without the bottom of his stomach opening into a black hole, missing words at the edge of his tongue, expectations of himself that he couldn’t ruin, rejection that he couldn’t take, heartache that he had lived his entire life, condensed into her smile, or her words, or her touch. It was the second worst thing he could ever remember going through but he couldn’t escape it, because Iris who couldn’t know about his pain, about his love, about his obsession. She was still right by his side everyday, a glaring light boring into his soul.

Sometimes it felt like she knew, would quirk her head that way she does —with a smile and plump cheeks. When she pushed on his shoulder with purpose and an obvious giggle. Sometimes it felt like he created everything she had ever done to be some mystery of her desire to abate his own, but he couldn’t know.

Still he’s dragging himself to sixth period, the last class of the day and the only one he has with Iris this semester, running on negative sleep. Up all night critiquing the last of his college essays. What a weird thing it was, writing down the worst things that ever happened to him to be read by some guy he didn’t know.

He was basically dragging his knuckles, the lights in this section of the building barely worked, hence the stoners hanging out there mostly, an unfortunate path to his rather long commute to calculus. He usually made quick work of the part of his walk —would rather die than experience a repeat of the 15 minute conversation he’d been roped into during passing period one time with a guy who reeked of weed but the biting exhaustion kept him from his usual breakneck pace.

He turned his head to the ground, trying to conserve pieces of his energy but now he noticed his shoes were untied, he bent down with a wretched sigh as soon as he got to the first stair of the flight of stairs he had to climb. The descending noise of raucous footsteps echoed on the old staircase, Barry didn’t even look up.

“ _Hey, dude_.” A pretty girl, upturned eyes shaded dark black —dark hair that swayed right above her shoulder, swaying like she had been running. Sweat around the edges of her hairline. She dressed bulky, grunge or whatever. A band on her shirt that Barry didn’t recognize, she wore it over her hoodie, the hood looked chewed and dickies that looked like they didn’t fit the rest of her tiny frame, frayed at the edges with holes near the pockets. 

Barry looks up at her, though he almost wants to look behind him, confused that she would have any interest in talking to him. 

“Yeah?” 

“ _Here, give one to your friends_.” She says already descending the stairs after pushing a number of flyers into Barry’s hands. Her voice is rough, soft and gravely but he barely catches the end of it before she’s already down the hall.

“Ohhkay?” He says to nobody. He fumbles with the small stack of yellow and pink papers in his hands, adjusting his backpack on his shoulders. He gathers them into a neat pile in his arms, a greyed washed edge of a young girl's face catches his eye on the other side of the paper. He picks the final one up off the floor.

A yellow flyer, a cracked crease in the middle,

# MISSING PERSON

**JOEY FISHER**

_**REWARD FOR 10,000** _

Last seen wearing:  
Gray sweater  
White shirt  
Black pants  
Red shoes  


Description:  
5 foot 7 inches  
Caucasian  
Ginger/Red Hair  
Green eyes  
147 Pounds  


##### Any inquiries please contact: 555-3169

*******

Barry pulls open his backpack, plopping his stuff onto his empty desk, glad that he wasn’t sitting next to anyone. Stuffing what is at least 15 flyers for a missing person in his backpack would look sketchy to anyone. Rubs at the back of his neck absently. He’s pulling out a textbook when a warmth presses against his back. 

“Barry! I haven’t seen you in what, 45 minutes. How you been.” She jests sliding around him, a smile already on her face and she sits up on his desk. He had just seen her, passed by her in the hall before 5th period, felt like a lifetime.

“Oh just horrible actually, you know what it’s getting progressively worse I think.” He says with a smile. She pushes his shoulder and he laughs, a pang lighting up his chest of adoration. She hurries into her seat behind him, the teacher’s clacking heels ringing in the room already.

She’s wearing one of his crew necks, too big for her, she hadn’t asked to wear it and he didn’t care because the sight of her in his clothes made his stomach knot. Made him imagine taking them off, but even that made him feel guilty. It drooped over one of her shoulders, drowning her a little which was a new development over the last couple of years, Barry somehow shooting up right past her. He still felt so much smaller than her, dwarfed under her magnitude to light up a room. She wore it like a dress, a neat triangle of a white shirt peeking out the top and leggings he knew she’d been wearing yesterday. 

It makes him laugh to himself, enough to forget the ominous stack of papers in his backpack that he reaches in again to get a pencil. He pulls a flyer out and studies it again. A passing recognition that he can’t place keeps dancing across his eyes. 

“ _Okay Class. We have finals to get ready for. I’ll let you guys form some groups and get to studying okay._ ” 

An eruption of scratching chairs against Linoleum bombard the room. Barry turns his chair around towards Iris, who is having a conversation with the girl she’s sitting next to (that he’s yet to learn the name of). 

“Barry?” Iris turns away from the girl who has a droll look on her face. Iris pouts her words when she wants something and that’s exactly how she says his name. “Can we just like… pretend to study, my brain is so damn fried. I closed up twice this weekend and I don’t think I’ve recovered yet.” 

“Well Iris, you are in luck.. because I can’t even find any pencils.” He says poking his head out from digging deeper into his backpack, already affirming he had no desire to forage through numbers.

“Barry, it's sixth period.”

“I know! Just all this stuff for the play has been making me a zombie. For example this morning, I stuck a fork in the toaster to get my bagel out, Joe had to remind me why you can’t do that. I shouldn’t even be here right now.”

“No way! Where was I when you were planning death by everything bagel.” Iris laughs.

“Uh… Joe literally had to drag you out of your bed, everyone was like 15 minutes late today because you slept through your alarm… Twice.” 

“Okay wow, I have no recollection of that.” Iris says playing innocent, fanning a hand over her face in over exaggerated calm.

“You threw a book at me, when I asked you for your notes this morning.” 

“Ok. That. I remember.” Iris laughs and Barry laughs leaning into her, making googly eyes at her; he was sure.

“I always forget you two live together.” Girl who’s name Barry couldn’t conjure from his brain even if he was paid to. Her drawl is slow, a lilting marching tune, she sounded like Daria with a sinus infection. She dressed like a cartoon character too, the same big green jacket everyday.

“Like brother and sister and everything, I mean.” And Barry’s smile falls fast, but he doesn’t correct her. Doesn’t know how he would without coming out sounding weird.

“Barry’s not my brother,” Iris says half seriously. “He’s like a little pet we keep around the house.” Barry stifles a round of laughter. The girl who cannot be named, smiles one of the smiles that everyone gets around Iris. Infectious.

“We aren’t related technically, but uh… he is my best friend.” Iris says turning to look at him, burning a blush up to the highest parts of his cheeks.

He turns away from her harshly, trying to hide the red tinge, surreptitiously hides his face in his backpack and he is faced with the grainy black and white picture of this missing girl once again.

“Iris, you should see this, maybe you could put it in your column.” Pulling a pink iteration of the gathered groups of flyers in his backpack. Iris’ face sombers.

“Joey Fisher?” Iris reads aloud. “You know this girl?” And Barry shakes his head, “Some girl just… handed me a stack of them in the stoner hallway.” 

“Jeez, she looks really young.” Iris laments, Barry agrees with a nod of his head. Iris is still studying it when she asks aloud, “Do you have rehearsals today?” 

Barry groans, an overwhelming despair enveloping him at the mention of the circus that was high school theatre, while placing his head in hands. Iris sets the flyer down.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Tilly has been making me suicidal. Her and Mr.Diedre have been like animals this whole week.” Barry laments. “I’m _completely_ aware that we are putting on our opening show this week but I literally can’t take anymore of the arguing, I either have to change my name and leave the country or quit that play.” Barry says placing his head on the desk.

“Tilly would find a way to ruin the rest of your life if you quit the play two days before opening night,” Iris says, and he can’t see her through the view of darkness he has between his hands but he can tell she’s smiling. “I’ll wait for you after school, so we can walk together.” She offers like a beacon of hope.

“You don’t have to, I heard it’s gonna rain.”

“No I want to.” Iris smiles and Barry never stood a chance.

********

The fresh wet air of the central city is cumbersome and lonely, beautiful like black roses. Short tendrils of water beat down on the top of his head as he lets go of the metal auditorium handle. Hunching his shoulders as he paces quickly toward the squatting figure posed against the exposed brick of the back side of the parking lot.

He thinks of a million words that mean thank you, inexhaustible amounts of gratitude to spill onto her, for waiting in the rain and staying after school for a two hour rehearsal but he’s still just a boy with a maladaptive crush,

“Boo.” 

Iris flinches high up into the air with a soft shriek, Barry is already laughing when she fully stands to punch him in the chest.

“Don’t _**do**_ that! God you scared me.” She’s smiling, with her face quirked to the side. 

He’s stepping back and walking backward as he struts out of the parking lot toward the sidewalk, she walks in front of him , her face stuck in a soft smile.

“You’re- you’re gonna run into something Barry,” she says, an increasingly concerned face conjures as they continue up the sidewalk. Shivering with cold, blanketed under the thick crew neck that probably smells like her now. “Seriously. Come on.” She says looping her hand in his crooked elbow spinning him so they’re walking conjoined in a losing fight against the soft steady flow of rain.

“Wait, stop.” Iris exclaims on the edge of a laugh, sounding like she just realized she’d been moving at all. Her feet come to stand still.

“Dad’s picking us up here, he called me to tell you to tell us to wait.” Iris breathes. “Why?” Barry questions, guiding his eyes out of the way of the rain, he doesn’t mind the droplets reflecting pieces of starlight off of Iris' eyes. 

“I don’t know, he said he had something to tell us.” Iris says already turning back towards the school. Iris has been on a bit of a hating Joe streak after he completely shot her down when she mentioned offhandedly that she might want to be a cop. She pouts the way kids pout, stomped feet.

Barry laughs and even though sky looks like it’s about to swallow them both in wet thundering destruction, he feels so light, almost like he’d float away if he wasn’t grounded, the melancholic hum that followed rehearsals hopped off around him like the pelting rain. Barry follows Iris in the looming dark, the soft whoosh of cars driving over piles of water and the music of falling drops on the top of Barry’s ears. 

They stalk toward the school and Barry pushes open the side entrance of the auditorium to stand in the warm yellow lit hallway. He drops his backpack off onto the floor and he can admit the wet squelch is a lot louder than he expects but Iris just about jumps out of her skin.

He laughs before he can stop himself, “Why are you so jumpy, you are about 10 seconds away from using your taser on me.” Her soft giggle drags a smile to the edges of his face

“Well for one, you're sporting a mean case of guy liner right now. It’s a little terrifying.” Barry gawks his face and rubs at his eyes half frantic. The pensive light illuminating the softer features of both of them.“Bullying me because I am a man of the arts is low even for you.” His voice muffled in his jacket as he used it to wipe in the waterline of eyes.

“Shut up.” She quips, pushing him on his side so he lolls against the pebbled concrete wall. “I was just kidding.” Barry nudges her with his shoulder hunching unconsciously as the rain water starts to bleed more into his clothes. “We don’t kid about accidental guy liner.” 

“You’re ridiculous, you know that.” She smiles pulling into his side, shaking minutely from the soft conditioned air. He smiles down at her. She settles into his side for warmth. He thinks consciously about if she can hear his heart.

“Yeah, ok.” Her face obscured with a beanie pushed far forward and her scarf pulled up around her mouth. “I totally forgot what we were talking about, Oh! I read a couple articles, while I was waiting for you and it isn’t just that girl, there've been like four girls in town who have disappeared, she’s just the first one from this school,” Iris says in a hushed tone. “I just totally freaked myself out.” Iris says shaking her head towards the ground

Iris was a bit of a school paper fanatic, wiggling her way into the school paper, the infamous Central City Cache for a column about crime and mystery expertly named (beyond the pale w/ Iris) and Barry explicitly blamed her smallville fascination, that or her crush on Tom Welling but he did his best not to acknowledge that.

“Jesus.. Four?” Barry whispers. “Oh my god, I just remembered why I recognize her, She- do you remember that fair last year? I competed in that science and engineering fair last year and she got like.. 2nd place or something.” Barry says emphatically, remembering the bright innocent smile on her face when the judges called winners. “She’s younger than us, I think she’s like a sophomore.”

“Hey Barry.” Barry whips his head towards the lilting banshee screech of Tilly Hall. Revulsion is a lacking word for the emotion that passes absently upon hearing her voice. Tilly Hall of the Hall fortune (Her father owns an adult diaper company; her and her parents are generally awful people with mild to severe narcissistic personality disorders) Tilly being on the lethal edge of the scale.

“Hey?” Barry questions gearing up for some tactful insults, Iris slinks closer towards him already poised with a soft sneer. Tilly Hall, despite the inexorable bullying she does to everyone, was gorgeous and currently playing Hermia, the love of Lysander's life.

“ _Liked your performance_.” Barry was astounded at her talent of making a compliment feel like a diss. “ _Really good for a newcomer seriously, hoping you’ll bring that emotion when it matters_.” She wore an aeropostale sweat suit under a thin white cardigan and general evil. He feels bad sometimes, thinking how hard it must be to be a caricature of yourself. “ _Oh and about the kiss… I think you’re right about waiting until we open, give it some real pizzazz_.”

Barry was at the edge of mumbling a forlorn ‘thank you’ at what was obvious bait for teasing but then she was already walking away. Iris was trying and failing at keeping a look of distaste from her features. The last thing Barry wanted to do was put his body even 40 feet near hers but a quick chill of embarrassment shudders his body at Tilly’s words, words said that were now scripture of his virgin status, scared of the lips of a girl who poised them like poison.

She struts softly down the empty hall, mischief high up into her eyebrows, “ _And about that girl, not really a surprise that she’s missing, I mean, she was dating a drug dealer, a guy who worked at that natoo- something or other. They literally sex traffic girls there so-_ ,” she has the curtesy to whisper. She pushed open the door to exit and the rush of rain and passing cars bullied at the corners of the door. 

“ _You know what they say about stupid games_.” She shot an obnoxiously white smile over her shoulder, and the sighing sound of her umbrella melts into the sound  
of the closing door. “God she’s such a bi—” 

_‘Ping ping ping’_

Iris' phone rings, she flips it open and Barry can hear Joe's gruff voice over the receiver in crackly definition. Iris nods yes to something he doesn't hear and then she slams the phone closed louder than Barry is sure she means to. Barry wishes constantly that he could convince her that he's not the little kid in third grade that needs the girl he likes to protect him, he doesn't know how to ask for her not to fight his battles. That she’s so much smaller than him now, that she fits in his side like she was meant to. 

“He’s outside.” 

“Oh.” Barry says shaking off the dredges of introspection, pulling his backpack off the floor onto his shoulders, pushing the door open for Iris. “I'm convinced that Tilly eats small children in order to look young, she has to be some decrepit old witch to act that terrible, it’s the same reason I’m not getting my lips anywhere next to hers if I can help it.” Iris laughs one of those laughs that sparkle in her eyes.

They duck their head against the rain and run toward the red tail lights of Joe’s station wagon. The car is practically 40°degrees warmer than they are but the ridge in Iris’ spine does not allow him the grace of warmth. “You guys okay,” Joe is saying, already putting the car in drive and looking over the line of their eyes to the back window. The corded tension in his shoulders and the lines of his forehead settle into the car dropping the temperature twice. Barry turns his eyes to Iris in a quick second of derision. She shrugs her shoulders minutely.

“You okay?” Iris asks after a beat of silence aside from the battering rain on the roof, and the melodic swish of the windshield wipers. “An armory got burned down.” Joe’s gruff lines teetering around the edges, slippery parts of pain and nerves. “I’m sorry Joe.” Joe huffs a laugh. “Don’t gotta be sorry to me Barry; I’m all good.”

Barry really tries not to notice Joe's hands tightening on the steering wheel, he really does. 

Iris is off-puttingly silent most of the ride home, monosyllabic answers to everything Joe says. They’d been in this wiry tension for weeks and Barry does a horrible job of not feeling responsible.

They’re halfway home when she turns to him after a bout of vengeful staring out the window, “Do you think Tilly was telling the truth, about that girl?” And the grave tone in her voice tells Barry she’s been thinking about it the whole ride home. And god, Tilly is a sickening, straight up mean person but she wouldn’t lie about gossip, it probably goes against her wretched rich clique code, “Probably.” Is all Barry can think to say and he knows it’s not enough with the way Iris turns away for more longing stares out into the abyss.

“What girl?” Joe asks and they’re just about turning the corner onto their street.

Iris doesn’t even look up to say something and the ripe pause where an answer should go, goes pregnant in its obscurity, “Uhm— This... Uh - Joey Fisher, she’s missing or that’s what people are saying.” Barry supplies.

“She doesn’t go to your school, does she?” Joe says and Iris perks up immediately, peels herself off the car door what Barry thinks is supposed to be inconspicuously.

“I think her father came in a couple weeks ago about a missing person’s.” Joe offers, it’s obviously a branch into the growing clearing between him and Iris. Then they’re pulling into the driveway, the lulling hush of the rain settling again, the blinking front lights turning grey against the garage door, and the push of the wipers quieting. Joe turns around slowly, a practiced ease to his movements.

“Okay.” Joe breathes on a sigh. Obviously on the edge of a biting lecture. “I’ve just been put on as lead detective on a bit of a big case. A case that might get a little bit of news coverage because of the people and places getting targeted. I want you guys to know that no matter what this case will not put you in danger. I purposefully mentioned that I didn’t want to take on such a big job right now but the new Lieutenant is a bit of a shark.” He says a derisive anger on his tongue.

“And it means a lot more long hours for me. So, I wanna know that I can trust you.” He says with a long look to Barry after looking at Iris. Barry’s heart just about beats out of his chest. Barry knows Joe, can read him like the back of his hand. An effortless expert in the concentrated arts of Joeolgy. Knows that something is eating at him, larger than Iris’ anger. Barry can see it in the aggregated lines pulling at the already aged parts of his face. So, of course he wants nothing to do with it but also wants to know desperately. Barry knows Joe and fear that bites on his lungs tells him that this is the moment, where he’s found out and his world ends and he’s kicked out forever.

“I want to know that I can trust the both of you, to still make your curfews if I’m not at home, to not invite a single person I don’t know into my home and not inviting any people to do any hormonal teenager things.” Joe finishes grandly. 

Barry takes a lung full of air that he was depriving himself of. 

“Okay?” Joe goads. 

A muffled okay comes from the both of them absently.

“Okay!?” Joe repeats.

“Yes.” Barry and Iris reply together, they share a weary look.

“I have to get back to the station, so you two go and be productive okay. I’ll be back before midnight.” He says turning the key again. Iris can't get out of the car fast enough and Barry isn’t far behind.

Barry has spent a lifetime agonizing about whether or not he should love Joe, to care about Joe always felt like he was giving up on his father who was wasting away in jail cell for a crime that he didn’t commit. So, when he saw Joe vulnerable, picked apart when he was always a statue of grace and commanding care, he felt like he belonged. That all the misshapen human parts of Barry that he didn’t share with anyone that looked like him could also just be in the faces of the people he cared about, who were heroes. But what about Iris, because Iris was also going to be his destruction, the lasting desecration of his livelihood, she was a beacon of light that was going to burn a hole right through him. But, God, what a way to go.

The rain is only a soft reminder as it dusts the both of them while they walk to the door.

“We should throw a party.” Iris says, dropping her tote bag at the foot of the door. Kicking off her wet boots and hanging her scarf and beanie on top of eachother on the rack by the door. Already padding to the kitchen in search of snacks. “There are better ways to make Joe mad that won’t result in us being grounded until we graduate.” Barry replies, pulling his scarf off and hanging it on the rack beside hers, pulling off his heavy jacket and letting it puddle on the floor near the door.

“Yeah, you're probably right.” Iris says, pulling apart a mozzarella stick. 

“God do you remember the last time he had a “big” case, I think I saw him two times all of ninth grade.” Barry says sitting on the couch to pull off his boots definitely dripping water into the plush brown of it.

“You’re exaggerating, I’m sure it was at least five,” Iris laughs walking towards the living room. “Oh god! Do you remember that day he took us to the zoo,” her voice hastening, bouncing around the four walls. He made us wear those uh— uhm; animal hats! The whole trip was just like completely out of guilt, it was more of punishment than anything.” Iris says plopping down next to him.

“Hey, I like the zoo.” Barry says, a soft smile on his face. A noticeable sticky wetness pulling at his body from his wet clothes.

“That’s because you are literally a 6 year old.” 

Barry slaps a hand to his chest, a pretend wound at Iris’ jab. “I’d say at least 12.” He smiles.

She smiles back. Then Barry notices, all at once but has noticed since he first walked in the door. They’re all alone. Sitting face to face, no borders. Just him and his desire all wrapped up in Iris. All wrapped up in this room. He could count the beauty marks on her face, the way they sit. It makes his hand twitch with anxiousness. And it’s not the first time he’s been alone with Iris, not by a long shot. Not even the first time in a while, but Joe in the car with that serious look, it made his mind fill up on Iris. On them, as if he was walking around with the world's worst kept secret like a bomb to his chest. It would kill them all when he finally let it go.

Iris couldn’t know how much he cared, but he felt like it was obvious, he couldn’t try to hide it even if wanted to. Was never good at hiding things from her at all, like her father, a born sleuth. It felt so improbable, this all consuming need for her, in ways he didn’t know yet, was almost too young to fathom the love that he had stuffed deep in the crevices that were exposed when his mom died. He couldn’t possibly be discreet about it, couldn’t tell if Iris was purposely obtuse or he didn’t know what she thought was love at all, or he was so far removed from someone she’d waste her breath on, that she couldn’t even imagine it. He pieced together a thousand reasons, and it all came back to him never saying it out loud.

“Okay I’m gonna go upstairs, because you have that blank look on your face that means you're thinking too hard.” She gets up, that pretty little smile stuck on her face, lightly squeezing his shoulder and grabbing her bag from the front door before running up the stairs.

“If you could give me your notes from calc before you go to bed, I’d love that.” Iris calls from the top of the stairs, the slight bang of her door closing rings in the living room. Barry lets out a kept breath. 

“Fuck.” He breathes to himself. 

***

He peeks into Iris’ room on his way into his room much later, sitting at the downstairs table to do his homework. Knowing if he tried to do it in his bed he’d go to sleep. Iris is an inch away from her computer screen, surely diving headfirst into another mystery and it's so familiar, it makes the warmest parts of his heart warmer for her. He pushes open the door, not trying to startle her..

“Here are the notes.” He says leaned against the doorframe, weirdly afraid of lounging in her room like he used to. 

“Just put it on my dresser.” She says absently, reading her screen intently.

He pads slowly to her dresser, and places the lengthy packet. That creased pink flyer sat face up on it. Her mothers necklace, resting in its see through case. And a framed picture of them, when they were a lot younger and so much more innocent. Unafraid of the world, that paid no mind to them, and the love they could have.

He turns around quickly and doesn’t say anything to her studious figure. Closing the door behind him. He walks ahead into his room and slaps down on the mattress exhausted. Bone tired in a way he hasn’t been in weeks.

“Goodnight Barry.” Iris calls a little later, but Barry is already asleep.

> Methinks I see these things with parted eye, 
> 
> When everything seems double
> 
> Act 4 Scene 1

* * *

December 6th 2006 | 04:17:54 | Iris

* * *

Joe has a penchant for grandiose shows of affection, lives for a sordid speech or two. Still, Iris has been at the receiving end of what is supposedly called ‘tough love’ for 17 years. It’s made grounding less of a punishment and more a way of life. Not to say she doesn’t feel loved, because Joe often goes out of his way to show it. Most memorably when she turned 16 and he set up a scavenger hunt around Central City, so she’d find memories from all her past birthdays. At the park where she turned 6, her earliest birthday memory, Joe stood there, with all her friends at the bench with the same stupid ice cream cake with a present in his hands, it was a necklace her mom wore.

And she hasn’t ever felt like Joe's pathological desire to see her as a 6 year old girl until she dies would get in the way of anything but her having a boyfriend before she’s 30, but recently he’s taken an ever growing crusade against her desire to literally help people. So she’s been going through a lot of doubts herself about how bad it’d be if she wants to be a cop. But mostly, the angering thing is that Joe can say kaput on the whole thing, and she just has to agree.

So Iris is pissed, more mad than she’s ever been at Joe and he decidedly is being cold back which won’t change what Iris is determining as an indefinite cold shoulder. She can’t escape the plight of what seems to be Joe’s hatred for his own qualities which is not listening to anyone else when they disagree with him. So she’s sitting in the passenger seat of a cop car heading to Joe’s precinct, to “spend some quality time together”. Also, because Barry has one last rehearsal for tomorrow's show and she’s sat through enough of them to turn her mind into actual mush. 

“You're coming in.” 

“I can do my homework in the car.”

“Iris... this car doesn’t have a heater.”

“Ok. I’ll wear my scarf.” Iris throws her scarf across her neck quite aggressively staring headlong into Joe’s exasperated face.

“You're acting like a child.” And Iris knows she is, Joe knows she is, the greater metropolitan area of Central City knows she is but that’s a moot point.

“That's the thing dad, I'm not a child, I'm going to college soon, I- I'm going to move out soon, and you're still so… hellbent on controlling me _and_ every single thing that I do.”

“And this… this display right here is supposed to convince me that you’re mature….. Iris, you know how I feel and I'm not gonna apologize because I'm not sorry for wanting you to be safe okay.” Joe has that look on his eye, that edge of a gigantic speech look on his face, concern and the desire to control. Iris squares her shoulders away from it. Then it dissipates, all at once, drips out of his features softly and quietly. “So... for the last time get out of my car before I have someone arrest you and take you in there with cuffs.” Iris isn’t 100% sure he means it but knowing Joe, He might be serious.

The tense trek to Joe's desk is well, tense. Adding up to the list of things that are now tense between Iris and Joe. Walking.

Iris has spent a fair amount of time, in the rusted bench seats of the CCPD police station, would wait on the benches with Barry, playing hand games when she was in elementary until late into the night when Joe couldn’t get a sitter, he’d smile over his desk with tired lines wrinkling around his eyes and she remembers them, the smiles like they were stitched into her skin. Iris would end up spreading her homework over Joe’s desk in middle school instead of sitting through the bro fest that was Barry’s science club, Barry always was adamant about her staying, but it was the real first group of people that Barry ever hung out with that wasn't her. So, she took to what was familiar, the wrinkled smile lines in Joe's face, each piece of him and this police station was a fond, sweet-sad memory. Just as much as home as home was, as Joe was, as Barry was.

Her brain runs on autopilot, walking through the golden mystique of the police station, details scored into even the smallest bits of railing and the metal bridges of the windows, it was like the world inside four walls, it had framed photos of people whom she never knew. It blasted her back, how she still cowered, hid behind Joe, who she placed as such a fixture, like she was still just a little kid. She feels it sometimes when she walks by him in here, like she’s still getting toured around and she wishes she could still hold her hand in his without the weight of realizing her age. She tries not to be scared of growing up, because then what would be the point of her anger?

He gets to his desk before her and sets down his overcoat on the back of his chair, anger or exhaustion apparent in his rigidness, while Iris lollygags putting down her bag under the desk and miscellaneous amounts of cold protection onto the step stool beside the chair. When she looks up again from under the desk, an officer is handcuffing a guy to the desk behind Joe’s, a guy with a lazy gait and a tall frame. She turns back toward her father as soon as the officer finishes frisking him, rather die than get caught staring.

Joe is a lined man, but here he flutters, buzzes with indiscriminate energy as he rifles around his desk to the side of Iris. “Ok you… sit down, I have to talk to Singh.” She plops down in his chair already looking to the side into her bag, she hears Joe's aggravated groan above her and she knows it has something to do with the computer he’s trying (and failing) to log into. They're new, they came shiny and pristine with Lieutenant Singh who was also quite shiny, new and pristine. He had just been promoted and brought in a lot of good press being one of the first out gay men in higher ranks, but that meant Iris got a front row seat to angered grumbling from Joe. “Stupid, stupid computer, you know I really hate these things. If people wanna know I'm here, how about they just come look.” Iris stifles a laugh. 

“Dad, you want me to help.” Iris offers and Joe turns to her with those tired eyes and shakes his head like he’s letting go of a memory. “I'll just do this later, finish that uh- homework you were talking about, i'll be right back.” He scoops a glaring yellow file off his desk , throwing back a lopsided smile, heading toward Singh's office.

Iris tries to fold in herself so she’s not obviously aggravated or approachable, so all the cops she unfortunately knows by name won’t try to make conversation, not even a few minutes pass by with the fluttering tense energy in the police station before they start smiling in passing, a nice cordial tap on the desk and a smile when they see her, it’s something she can nod to but some of them exchange painstaking pleasantries even though they can see her doing her homework. She hears Tom, (an angry ugly man, with an even worse disposition) the guy with the desk behind her dad discussing something, presumably the convict twelve feet away from her and she's almost curious enough to turn around but she caught sight of a piece of him walking toward Joe's desk and she saw enough to know not to turn around.

Joe left, swirled around the corners of the CCPD empire in search of the chief and now here Iris is, alone with access to a real cops desk, ample time and a chip on her shoulder. Unfortunately she’s suited with half a brain and it actively burns her fingers toying with the edges of the locked drawers. While she contemplates commiting what might be a felony, she starts actually hearing what Tom is saying,

“It’s ridiculous, I mean.. It's like he don’t exist or something. Like clean, professionally clean. I don’t even know what to make of it, I’m still not convinced that goddamned club doesn’t have something to do with it.”

_“You talked to the CI’s?”_

“Yes, of course I talked to the CI’s, what kinda  
the question is that.” 

The clatter of heavy papers smacking against a wooden desk accompanies a weary sigh.  
“West keeps talking about that case from 97’ ; never solved, all the arson with the pharmacies and shit, and I guess it makes sense, but we didn't get leads on those guys either.” 

_Clang!_

Iris rubs the back of her neck sitting diagonal to the chair, sitting off to the side of her presumably bruised ass, the sound echoes on the metal walls, shocking her features and startling all the cops out of their work stupor. 

“You okay?” 

He’s not even standing fully over her and she realizes belatedly that he’s the guy who was newly cuffed to Tom’s desk. Younger and nicer (looking) than the rest of the sordid cops staring in vague concern. The gravel in his voice, soft and pained, his voice like a bruise travels so quickly down her stomach. Before she even realizes she’s staring, her panties are wet.“No, yeah- I’m totally okay, I fell because I was- uh, just leaned back.. haha. Thank you.” He smiles, his eyes crinkle around the edges, sporting a cut on his bottom lip and a matching one in his eyebrow. But most catching are his eyes, blue piercingly, the brightest blue; Iris had ever seen.

She doesn’t take the hand he extends, mortified, completely and utterly. She wipes her hands off on her butt instead and saunters up to standing and so forcefully avoids eye contact, that it actually makes her look more crazy. His hand is still on her elbow, and it is making her entire body flush, white hot, well until the wet blanket that is Joe West's booming voice cuts through all the pieces of her manufactured sexual tension between her and blue eye guy.

“Why are you touching my daughter?” And he? Dark brown hair, right on the edge of pale skin, bright blue eyes and what was probably an eight pack under his six layers of band paraphernalia and jeans that were ripped at the knee, but not purposefully obvious by the blood seeping from the fabric, he swipes away his hand smoothly but quickly, gliding back into his chair his hand no longer stretched out behind him.

“It was my fault dad, I fell.” Iris says quickly, already placating Joe with her hands, he barely glances down at her before he turns to the side of him, “Lawrence, how about you watch your arrestees okay.” Iris turns toward the ground embarrassed (still a little aroused). She turns to him again in derision, and she notices for the first time the bruises on his knuckles and the rip in the top layer of what seems to be his strategically placed abundance of clothing. 

“I was just booking him, he’ll be outta your hair in a minute.” The balding, pink cop all but scoffs and turns back toward the skinny white cop with a shock of ginger hair and nervous temperament, whose name Iris can never remember. The tension is palpable as almost all the cops stirring at desks that day watch them in rapt attention. Iris gets the sneaking suspicion this has nothing to do with her. “Dad it’s okay, it was my fault.” She says again forcing herself not to ogle blue eye guy who was staring in varying degrees of interest at the scene unfolding.

“Yeah, Listen to your daughter Joe.” Joe looks down at Iris fully for the first time since he’d gotten out here, the evidence of a bad mood that had nothing to do with what was happening right now clear on his weary features. A tense minute of angered staring passes.

“I have to go down to the evidence room, try not to talk to any more criminals while I’m gone.” He leans down and whispers, squeezing her shoulder and a barely there kiss to her temple. It’s distinctly a piece of levity, Joe throws a scornful look back at Lawrence and what must be a worse one to blue eyes guy at the way Iris can hear his chair creak in an opposite direction to Joe's desk.

She gracefully or a somewhat pathetic attempt at gracefulness goes and picks up her chair, to sit back down and try to focus on the homework she so adamantly decided she was going to do. A quiet couple minutes pass and Iris has to force her heart to stop beating so fast, not quite able to shake the dredges of embarrassment.

“Hey.” And Iris' whole body freezes, her eyebrows rise into her temples and her stomach almost comes out of her nose. Hey? What was Iris supposed to do with hey. Respond… She couldn’t respond, that definitely must be a felony. She spins slowly, noting minutely that Tom was not at his desk and she didn’t even hear him leave.

“Hi?” She realizes she is making a mistake even engaging in this conversation.

“What’s your name?” He smiled, he had diamonds in his teeth that she hadn't noticed before, a thin outline of metal grills on his canines they were pointed like silver fangs, “Iris.” She gulps choking on her awkwardness, “Like the flower, not the thing in your eye.” He smiles and she feels victorious and sick at the same time, tumbling headfirst into nerves. “What’s yours?” When had she become so bold, or was it just to spite Joe.

“My friends call me Fang.” A lip smacking sound against his glaring teeth. And Iris has to try not to laugh. “And we’re friends?” Iris says, trying to hide what is becoming an infectious smile. He sounded older, mature, very sure of himself. He has lines in his face that suggested he was older; she didn’t know how old, he had to be in his late twenties at least.

“Yeah, I mean we've been through a lot together, I saved you, I met your parents, I say we're like this.” He twists his fingers together on the hand not literally cuffed to a cops desk, a cocky swagger to the way he talks, convinced that people want to hear what he has to say. Iris tries not to be flustered. “You saved me?” Iris asks sarcastically, “Okay, Fang… if we’re friends what are you in here for.” 

He leans back in the metal chair, that little cocky smile never leaving the edge of his mouth. Then his face gets serious, twists into this little nervous glare, he leans as far forward as he can in his chair and Iris finds herself leaning in too.

“Well I'm from New Jersey originally, “ he says leaned close as if trading a whisper, “I spent a little time in jail for a job I did with one of my best friends.” He picks at his nails, casts his gaze to the ground as if even the mention of this little friend rips at him. Iris feels warm under her skin, tantalized by the way he was actually trusting her with this. “While I was there I had some time to really think. I was going to pull the job of all jobs. I just needed a little planning, some guts and a swat team. Until I hit a snag wi-.”

“Is that… the plot to Ocean's Eleven.” Iris scoffs, embarrassed at her own investment in the stupid little tale. He leans back gleefully, a wry little smile high up into his cheekbones. “I was hoping you hadn’t seen it.” He laughs and his blue eyes sparkle like the bedazzled fangs in his mouth, making Iris wish she could shield her eyes from the way he gleamed.

“Everyone’s seen that movie,” Iris can't seem to catch herself from smiling, enjoying this sliver of attention from a presumed criminal. “Besides they don't get caught at the end, if you did what they did in that movie and got caught you would not be sitting here talking to me in a central city police station.”

“Should've known, you are a cop’s daughter, must know all the ins and outs of the law.” and Iris doesn't know why but it feels like he’s teasing her, but he’s smiling showing all his teeth and to an outsider they would have definitely seen the wolf and his meal sitting across from each other.

“So, do you party?” And he licks a silver fang in mouth with a teasing grin on his face, obviously finding humor at Iris’ confused one. “No sweat, I’m just wondering what a cop’s daughter gets up to, especially a pretty one like you.” He puts his hand up as if he’s innocent in his crime of flirting.

He leans back again this time, and Iris wishes she could do something besides twisting her fingers, but with the way he spreads his legs, occupying space even when he’s chained up. It throws her, it’s like she’s never talked to anyone of the opposite sex before.

“Sure, I party. I mean not like a lot but…” She’s been to approximately two highschool parties in her life and one had been in a McDonald’s.

He smiles one of those smiles, and it makes her stomach do backflips. Evident on her face she’s flustered, She has for the record talked to boys before, she even technically had a boyfriend in middle school, but Iris was so scared of Joe finding out she made Barry break up with him for her, she’s had her chances with a couple boys in her school now but they were all lackluster. She didn’t even really have time for them, between her column and work at the coffee shop and school.

Sometimes she likes to imagine dating someone like Barry. Who was nice, caring and attentive, who listens to her, really listens to her. Sometimes she divulges in imagining what it would be like if she met Barry differently, not that she thinks of him that way or tries not to think of him that way, because realistically he was her brother. Legally anyway. So it didn’t matter that he had a sweet smile or nice hands, and this mop of hair that stuck out in the morning in such an adorable way. She thought about yesterday, how much it had bothered her to hear Tilly talk about that stupid kiss, had seen it mimed in the rehearsals she’s sat through about a thousand times, but the the thought of watching it on a big stage made her queasy. Iris could never tell herself apart from Barry, how entangled in him she was but she had learned to boil it down to simple appreciation of the aesthetics of the other teenager living in her house through her hormone fog.

So, for all the comparison Iris knows at least minutely the man sitting across from her with a wry smile couldn’t possibly be nice or caring or attentive, but she was enamored with him. His fangs and his eyes and his band shirts and how he just smelled like danger. Enough danger not to even tell Iris why he was sitting here. 

“You gotta party with me sometime.” He says, that soft voice that sounded like a threat, it’s like glazed fire and Iris doesn’t know why she wants to touch the flame.

“Are you gonna tell me what you actually did to get arrested?” 

“Nah, it’s boring, _definitely_ not as good as Ocean's eleven.” 

“Did you pee in public or something?”

A shocked laugh rips from him. 

“No, nothing like that. Just some dickheads at my club who don’t know how to take a hint.” 

And Iris raises her eyebrows, piecing his trife little act together, Club rings like cowbells on each part of her brain. She tries to conspicuously check behind her for her father, getting increasingly worried about his return.

Then the smack of a heavy folder gets dropped in her peripheral, forcing her head forward and her heart to race.

“Cole, could we do without adding solicitation of a minor to your rather lengthy rap sheet.” And the nonchalance in his shoulders and in his eyes let’s the pit in Iris’s stomach dissipate, then that makes her queasy. Then she thinks of Joey fisher, lets the name past behind her eyes the split second she spins turning straight forward, letting a rod place itself in her spine.

“Iris!”

And it’s Barry striding through the police station, holding the straps of his backpack, a smile lighting up his features. A bright blip to what was becoming an overcast shadow.

“Barry, aren’t you supposed to be at rehearsals, opening night is tomorrow.” She tries not to glance behind her, wanting to defend herself against who Fang/Cole might think Barry is. He pulls her into a side hug before he leans both hands on the desk. “It got cancelled.” He sighed, “Tilly and Mr. Diedre got into it about ‘creative direction’ and then Tilly called him an uninspired loser with a thinning hairline so he started crying and left the room, he didn’t come back for like 15 minutes and people started leaving so I got a ride with that girl Angela because her mom works at the Dairy Queen down the street.” Barry rushes pulling off his scarf and beanie. 

“Who’s he?” Barry gestures with his shoulder behind Iris. And Iris tenses. “ I don't know, just some guy.” She hears pieces of the conversations behind her and has to force herself not to listen.

“Barry!?” 

“Joe! Hey.” Barry leans in to side hug Joe. “Why are you here?” Joe says stepping around the desk, the flushed look of over exertion apparent on his features. He hides a thick brown accordion folder under his armpit. 

“Rehearsals got cancelled, and Iris told me you guys were coming here today, so I thought I’d chill here too, plus the heater actually works in here” Barry smiles putting his bag down against the front of the desk. Joe just smiles but he looks distracted. He maneuvers around Iris and moves to his computer.

“Barry, come with me for a sec.” Iris says, throwing a heated look behind her as she loops her arms through the crook of Barry’s elbows and heads for the stairs.

***

“I think that guy, the one who is handcuffed at the desk behind my dad’s, works at that _natus malum_ club.” Iris whispers and Barry who is now perched on the upstairs benches just looks around in a moment of derision. Confusion and bewilderment obvious on his face. “What? That’s the name of a club? That’s an awful name.” Iris forcibly puts a hand to his mouth and puts a finger over lips, shushing him. 

Iris thinks she has a moment of true rage before she whispers, “ _Natus malum_ , the club that Joey Fisher got abducted from. That club.” And Barry’s mouth makes a perfect ‘O’.

“How do you know that? You were actually talking… to him.” Barry says in what seems to be disgust. “No! I wasn’t talking to him… Well a little. But, only because he talked to me first!” 

“How did you know he worked there? Barry said, soft features alight, willing to listen that way he does that makes Iris feel completely validated.

“Okay so, I spent all last night looking that place up and they have all kinds of shady shit going on, Tilly was right about the whole sex trafficking thing, the guys who used to own the club got arrested like 7 years ago for racketeering and firearm charges and like a dozen sexual assault and sex trafficking cases. But the craziest part is that the club just reopened a couple months ago under the same name, they even have a website! And admittedly I got pretty deep into it because I was on this backpage forum attached to the site reading club reviews at like 1am and a bunch of reviewers talked about a bartender that wore grills, silver fang grills.” 

“I don't think I knew that white kids wore grills.” Barry laughs and then promptly shuts his mouth at the derided look on Iris’ face. “Can I finish what I was saying. Please?” Barry makes a go ahead motion with his hand while he twists his gloves off his fingers.

“After reading a couple of the reviews, I realized that they weren't even talking about the club, it was about drugs. Like the most ‘reliable’ drug dealers in clubs, I didn't notice at first but all the reviewers were talking about candy and stuff.” 

“Candy?” Barry questions, shucking his coat down further on his back, Iris nods and locks behind herself quickly, checking for secrecy. She turns around and catches Barry trying to follow her eyeline, jutting his neck out over the sides of her shoulders, but she looks back at him and smiles a sheepish little smile.

“Uh.. Then I remembered that case Dad had with CCPD and the DEA.”

“Yeah I remember that, that was when we were in 9th grade right?” 

“Yeah, so all that stuff they were saying about him didn't make sense but then I remembered that stupid lecture Dad gave us about peer pressure- and you remember that right?” Iris says laughing slightly, she puffs out her chest and deepens her voice imitating Joe, “ Alcohol addiction makes you fat and ugly and if anyone offers it to you just spit in their face.” Barry laughs slightly, “ Yes, I unfortunately do remember that, those pictures of meth teeth still haunt me.” Barry shudders with a laugh.

“Oh my god! Yes!” She laughs and then has to refocus. “Okay, my point was that he listed like all the names for ecstasy and that’s what they were saying on that site, that he had the best ‘candy’ or to “check him for sweets”. Iris says bunching her fingers.

“That means the guy down there has to work at the place that Joey Fisher probably disappeared from, and it means he is probably a part of the shady crowd that the boyfriend Tilly Hall talked about was in.”

Barry is obviously bombarded by the manic energy Iris spreads as she sits across from him. The long second of silence obviously stretches too far as Barry digests the information.

“Barry, we have to get into that club.”

“HUH?” Barry’s says and the woman sitting beside them on the other bench turns and stares at them with a look of murder on her face. Iris watched Barry smile a sheepish little smile, cocking his head to side to appear innocent to the seemingly distressed women.

“What do you mean, we have to go. First of all, Joe would kill us. Second of all, Joe would kill us!” Barry says guiding them up off the bench into a corner away from the glaring woman. 

“Thirdly, how would we even get in, we—” Barry’s gestures frantically between them “—are children. Also isn’t _natus malum_ like all the way on the other side of the city. Not to mention, what are you even planning to do when we get there.” Barry attacks Iris with these questions, and she hates that she doesn’t have answers to any of them.

“Barry, I— it’s - .” A fish out of water grasping for words, flailing a little. She shares a heated look with Barry who can only offer her exasperation back.

“Look... She’s been missing now for almost three weeks. Can you imagine if I disappeared like that and no one was _**really**_ looking for me.” Iris shakes her head slightly looking towards the ground, suddenly embarrassed by the enormity of her desire to find this girl.“A- And this is like a chance, an actual chance to find out and maybe i can be the one to save her, but even if I can’t —I just wanna know what happened. I have to at least try Barry” Iris is looking at Barry now, staring at him in his eyes, “That guy can get us in, and we can ask him questions, and I don’t know I’ll tell my dad, file a report or something, I just have to do something.” 

“Iris.” Barry pleads, but she can see it in his face that he understands, that he agrees, that he'd do the same thing for her and that if push came to shove and he needed help like this, Iris would do it for him.

“Jesus, you’re gonna get us killed” Barry says leaning his head back against the linoleum.” And Iris giggles, A giddy little jig erupting from her as Barry starts to smile too.

They lean over the banister together, the artificial warmth from the central heater, not warmer than the promise of adventure licking at their heels. She zeroes in on Lawrence’s desk, trying and not trying to look for Fang/Cole only for the metal chair to be empty. She darts her eyes around the place searching for him, somehow a ticket on the rest of her life.

Proof that she’s capable enough to do her dad's job, proof that she can help Joey fisher, proof of something and the proof has poofed away. She just about turns around in defeat when she sees him by the exit, staring right back up at her. He smiles, and he shows those fangs again and it makes her nervous, it makes her stomach butterfly. He motions for her, raises his newly uncuffed hand and beckons her, with the way she stands above him. The notion is easily a descent into hell.

“Barry, can you wait here for like, one second.” She says already leaving, barely even checking if Joe is downstairs. Following a lead, a chance.

“Wait. Iris what-” 

She’s already halfway down the stairs by the time she wisps her head around to Barry to mouth an apology.

It’s hard not to be obvious in a half empty police station on a wednesday, that’s built like a museum and echoes your every footstep. Especially when your father is sat upfront, luckily he's wearing his old man glasses and his shoulders are all bunched up in the way that's telling the world he doesn't get computers. So she tiptoes in that way you're actually running, the balls of her feet barely touching the floor.

She flattens her hair just outside the exit, checks her teeth in the gleaming gold of the metal lining of ccpd.

“Hey ‘Iris like the flower’.” he mocks in that punching tone, dragging a cigarette. She bows her head to the freezing cold and to the growing warmth under her cheeks. Whipping wind blowing around them and the naked trees are no more exposed than her. She just barely let herself realize that she had come out here with nothing to say, didn't know that she was even looking in the right place. But he was looking at her, no expectation on his face, just a detached interest, an aloof allure at best and it still made Iris weak at the knees, Then she was enveloped with warmth as a heavy flannel was placed around her shoulders. “You look cold.” he shrugs, looming over her, his hands lingering at the apex of her collarbones fluffing the collar. He’s too close, gazing at her with his too blue eyes. Then he just steps back adjusting on the wall so he is facing her leaning on one foot, the smoke dripping out between his lips while he murmurs it.

“How are you out here right now, weren’t you getting booked.” Iris says fighting a minor crack in her voice, clearing it loudly, nervous tremors up her arms and hot fire on all the surfaces he touched.

“Ah, me and Major Tom go way back. That's just how that guy likes to do lunch.” he jokes on the edge of a soft grin. He stamps out his cigarette grinding it with the tip of his scuffed shoes, absent in a way he wasn't before when they talked inside.

Iris chuckles and smiles to herself and tries to remember the last time she'd been so encumbered by the mere presence of someone, rendered deaf and mute at the sound of his voice. 

“That your boyfriend?” He asks, gesturing his head upwards. A teasing lilt to his voice as if Iris had been caught red handed. He looks at her with care, like she’s a meal, she’s baking under his stare and she has to do everything in her power to not imagine the hands that are playing on the edge of his face somewhere in her body, keeping her warm like his jacket, enveloping her like his voice. But what does she say, what answer does he want to hear, is he going to try something right outside this police station with a minor if she says no, is he even interested in her, is he humoring her as a game.

“Yeah.” And it’s a stupid lie, stupid, dumb, dumb, dumb, the stupidest dumb dumb idiotic lie she’s ever told. Feels it in the way her chests knots up when she says it, in the way the teasing smile on his face droops a little, the way she feels her whole stomach threaten vomit. It was protection, or something. Protection from the way she’s reacting to this boy she’s doesn’t know who looks like he could hurt her on accident, who’s older than her and more experienced, who’s probably friends with guys who sex traffic teenagers. She needed a wall in between him and her desire and she stuck a pasty science nerd who had smaller muscles than her as her main line of defense. But she was still right there, looking up at him, the way he towered over her. Right here basking in him, saying anything other than the fact that she was completely and utterly single felt like a gunshot to her pussy that was screaming for reprieve from drowning all day.

“Why’d you come out here?” He says leaning more deliberately, a quizzical look on his features and his voice touches all over her, it's like burnt caramel the way he sounds. Its tense, the wind almost feels thicker around them, with the way he stares at her. He’s challenging her, with a quirked smile on his lips and his arms crossed in front of him and those blue eyes, daring her to take the chance he’d laid out right in front of him. To trap her in his mirage.

Besides, Iris doesn't have an answer. She has no idea what she's doing out here, couldn't explain it to anyone even if she wanted to, Originally it was because she thought he might be her way into the club where Joey Fisher disappeared, but all she’s doing is getting lost in this boy's eyes. “ Why did you ask me to come out?”

That smug grin must pay rent the way it lives on his face. They stand there in charged silence. Too many moments past, or not enough, Iris isn't sure. 

He sticks his tongue in his inner cheek and mutters a soft okay to himself. “Well.. My little flower, I gotta get outta here.” That raucous little grin smeared over his face like blood on a windowsill. ”Don't wanna get charged for loitering and all.” he pauses a short moment deciding something in his head that Iris can see plain on his face bothers him. He finally shakes his head, getting rid of some excess baggage clogging his brain, digs low into his front pocket and pulls out a small paper folded over itself. “Think about coming to this, yeah, I'd love to see you there.” He turns around quickly and when he walks away he doesn't look back, he lights another cigarette and the smoke trails behind him. 

Iris stands there and the sky starts to fall with snow.

“YOUR JACKET!?” She only just remembers to scream after he is halfway down the block.

“Give it to me, the next time you see me!” He exclaims, his voice hoarse enough that raising his voice still sounds like a whisper. 

Iris body locks up hearing the next time you see me, makes her conjure up what the paper could say. Is it his number, his address, a party. She finally looks down when he rounds the corner, drags her fingers along the grooves in the dented paper. 

A flyer to _natus malum_. A tagline to wear a santa hat for a free shot. 

Friday. Doors open at 10. It’s was a hurricane warning and she was about to walk into the storm

**Author's Note:**

> Leave some feedback and some criticism both deeply desired lol. Have a gr8 day whoever reads this!!


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